We Made It
by adangeli
Summary: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.
1. Stir Fry and Crunchy Rice

_**Author's Note: So I was watching Forever In A Day tonight and this popped into my head and wouldn't go. I figured I'd share it since I bothered to write it down. :D**_

_**This doesn't have anything to do with anything I'm writing that you're currently (maybe) reading. But I've got grand ideas I'm not spilling about right now.**_

_**In other news, check out my FFN or AO3 profiles to get involved in the Sam/Jack Quarterly Claiming Challenge – a fic/art/vid prompt/challenge/request event. Can't find that certain fic you're looking for? Go ask somebody to write it. Giddy to try out your new photoshop program but aren't sure what to make? See what folks are asking for.**_

_**Oh, this is kinda **_**pre-ship**_**, if that's really a thing. **_

* * *

She shows up with a six-pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of raw chicken breasts. Confused, he lets her in and she pushes past him to the kitchen like she's been in there since Daniel's wake. She hasn't. He still hasn't said anything other than her name, but she's pulling open the fridge and liberating questionable vegetables like a woman on a mission. And considering the raw chicken, maybe she is. He shrugs, bends around her to put the beer in the fridge and starts opening drawers to find the corkscrew.

He figures she'll talk when she's ready. And he's not one to turn down the promise of food – especially considering he was previously trying to decide between Hungry Man Barbeque and Hungry Man Meatloaf. But when she throws onion, yellow squash, mushrooms, and broccoli all in a pan together with no oil or seasonings, the chicken still wrapped in cellophane and apparently forgotten, he figures the two of them are going to need him to step in at some point. Clearly, Carter doesn't cook. He finds that amusing. And endearing. But damned if he's going to actually say that.

He bumps her aside with his hip and turns the heat off under the pan. He sort-of-carefully separates the vegetables on the counter then puts the pan back on the stove. Within minutes, he's cut the chicken into thin strips and has oil heating for a quick stir-fry. He silently hands her a box of minute rice and she blushes.

She puts almost the right amount of water into a bowl she finds in the third cupboard she tries with a little too much rice, shoves the whole thing into the microwave and sets it for twice as long as she needs to. Finally, he realizes something's wrong. He presses a glass of her wine into her hand and points her by the shoulders towards a stool in the corner. Armed with a wooden spoon and no clue he prompts her, "Not that I don't love a good dinner ambush, but what's going on?"

"What do you do when you don't know if you can do it anymore?" she asks and then drains half her glass.

"Do what?" he asks carefully and dumps the onions into the hot oil.

"It," she gestures widely, "anything. All the…shit we do."

"Three and a half years, Carter, and I've never heard you so carefully _not_ say something."

"One of our teammates _killed_ the wife of another teammate. How the hell do we come back from that?"

"Teal'c did what he had to do." He adds the broccoli.

"I know that."

He knocks the veggies around in the pan with his wooden spoon and idly notices she hasn't called him _sir_ even one time. He's gotta admit it… He's impressed.

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is, I've never felt like this before."

"Like what?" He pokes at a spear of broccoli, determines it's done enough, and dumps the chicken, the squash and the mushroom all in together along with a splash of sesame oil he finds hiding in his cupboard. While she thinks, he unearths some soy sauce and garlic powder and figures it won't be great, but it'll be more edible than whatever she'd had in mind when she showed up with raw chicken.

"I don't know," she finally says. "But I don't like it.

"Get used to it."

"That's your advice?" she asks and gets up to refill her glass.

She grabs a can of beer out of the fridge and waves it at him but he rejects it and pours himself a glass of the _really shitty_, he thinks after a sip, wine she's drinking. "Carter, this wine sucks."

She grimaces as if she's just noticed. "Yeah, it's pretty bad." But she takes another sip anyway.

"Sometimes you just do the best you can," he says and pulls her over-done and slightly crunchy rice out of the microwave.

"Do you think Daniel's okay?"

"He will be."

"What do you think he's going to do?"

"How the hell should I know? I've never lost the woman I love."

"You're divorced," she points out unnecessarily.

"It's not the same. When Sara and I split, it's because it was the right thing to do."

"So you didn't love her anymore?"

"Not the same way," he says and scoops crunchy rice and half-assed stir-fry into a couple of bowls before gesturing towards the dining room.

He puts a bowl down in front of the chair she chooses and she pokes listlessly at the veggies with one tine of her fork. "I don't think I've ever loved anyone the way Daniel loved Sha're."

"Not Hanson?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. How do you know if you love somebody enough?"

"Enough's relative."

"I just keep trying to picture what it would have felt like if I'd lost my dad the way Daniel lost Sha're."

"It's not the same."

"Have you lost a parent?"

"Yeah."

"Well, me too."

"I know," he says.

"And it was awful."

"It's not the same," he insists. "We love people in different ways. Losing a parent is different than losing a child is different than losing your soul mate."

"Was it harder losing Ch—"

"Yes," he interjects in a way he hopes she'll understand that now she's supposed to drop it. He likes her. He enjoys her company and watching her six more closely than he needs to. He might even enjoy making her smile a little too much. But he's not gonna talk to her about his son.

She finally takes a bite of the food he's been plowing through mindlessly. "I completely screwed up the rice."

"It's a good thing you've got a day job," he agrees.

"Why are you even eating this?"

He shrugs. "Because we made it."

She looks at him like maybe what he's saying is profound so he rushes to continue. "And because it's still better than a TV dinner. Besides, I bet I don't end up overeating." He winks at her.

She ducks her head and smiles a little, but she picks out the veggies and the meat and leaves the rice in her bowl.

"I'm sorry for ambushing you tonight."

"Did you get what you came for?"

"I don't know what I came for," she says.

"Well, you gonna show up for work tomorrow?"

"Yes, sir," she says.

"Then the rest doesn't really matter, does it?"

When she leaves it's like she's sucked the air out of the place. Her beer's still in the fridge – six pack broken but untouched. The wine bottle has half a glass left that he dumps down the sink. Their bowls are identifiable by the quantity of rice left behind – all of hers, none of his.

In her absence he starts to understand what she was asking, maybe gets what she was feeling, feels a little bad for not peeling back some of his protective layers. She's young and brilliant and, whether he never noticed it before or not, a little fragile in strange ways. _Big blue eyes_ ways. _Get him into a whole heap of trouble if he isn't careful_ ways.

Anyway, the next time he's at the grocery store he finds himself picking up bottle of decent wine. Just in case.


	2. Macaroni and Cheese

_**Author's Note: So this is happening, apparently. It's another "Sam shows up with food… sort of," story. This one comes right after Jolinar's Memories/The Devil You Know.**_

_**There are literally five other things I'm supposed to be writing right now – three of them for a grade – but this idea isn't leaving me alone. Apparently rewatching Stargate is good for getting the creative juices flowing.**_

* * *

He's not really surprised when she shows up after the very next mission. Daniel lost his wife, then she almost lost her father, they were all tortured with memories of their worst moments, so she hands him a brick of Colby with a sheepish look and he ushers her through to the kitchen.

He pours her a glass of the wine he bought – a red blend in a kitschy bottle he'll never admit to having tried the first time of his own volition – and then regards the block of cheese dubiously. At least last time she'd brought meat. In the end he hands her the cheese along with a nub of sharp cheddar and a hunk of Parmesan from the back corner of his freezer, a cheese grater and a bowl.

He's got water on to boil before she speaks. "I'm going away with Dad for a couple of days."

"Good." He rummages through his pantry and finds pasta and breadcrumbs.

"I guess," she says and peels the plastic away from the cheddar.

"You don't sound very excited to spend some time with your dad. Whose life we just saved, at great peril to our own, by the way."

"The blood of Sokar made me remember things I wish I hadn't."

He salts the water. "Yeah. Me too."

"I thought I'd dealt with all the Jolinar memories," she finishes the cheddar and knocks her knuckle against the shredder. She hisses, examines it, determines she's uninjured and reaches for the Colby.

He can't leave it though, and dumps the pasta and breadcrumbs onto the counter before nudging the cheese and utensil out of her hands. He holds her right hand in both of his and examines her fingers too closely for a nonexistent injury. But he just watched as she was hauled off several times and tortured for information so he's giving himself a pass. She sits quietly and lets him run the pads of his fingers over her knuckles like it's okay. With her left hand she sips his better wine.

"I wouldn't have though Jolinar's memories were all bad," he says in an attempt to keep things from getting too heavy, but his voice isn't as light as he'd hoped it would be.

"Not all of them were," she concedes. "Doesn't mean I was comfortable seeing them. But I was talking about my own memories. And maybe a little about the shock of some of hers."

He finally drops her hand and turns back to the stove where the water's finally showing signs of life in the form of tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the pot. He sticks the end of his index finger into the water and pulls it back quickly. Not boiling, but definitely hot.

Behind him, she says, "I can't believe I'd forgotten what it felt like to find out about my mom."

"You didn't forget," he says but finds he can't look at her. "You learned to deal with it. And you can't go through life feeling that pain, that strongly every day."

"Or you might go on a suicide mission through the Stargate?" she supplies and sounds like she's kicking herself by the end of the sentence.

He turns and looks her in the eye. "Yes."

She blushes and then pays closer attention to cheese shredding than he thinks he's ever seen. He watches while she shreds a lot more cheese than they're going to need and then takes the Colby out of her hand and replaces it with the Parm. She just keeps shredding.

At his back he feels the water start to boil so he dumps the pasta in then pulls out another saucepan. He's finished the roux before she speaks again.

"If things had happened even a little bit differently, I wouldn't have joined the Air Force."

"Would you bring me the milk?" he asks when he's not sure how to respond.

She puts a half-gallon in his hand and he finds it's already opened. He pours in what looks like a right amount and hands it back.

"Carter, if you hadn't joined the Air Force, we'd probably all be dead."

"That's a lot of pressure to put on one person."

"You're a superhero," he says with a shrug. "Deal with it."

"I don't want to be a superhero," she says and then hands him the bowl of cheese. "I want to be fourteen and I want to finish those cookies. And maybe grow up to be an astronaut who gets to travel through the Stargate to other planets in a galaxy where there aren't any Goa'uld."

"It's a nice story," he says and slowly stirs his sauce until it's smooth and creamy. He mixes in a dash of hot sauce for good measure and then turns the heat down to low underneath it until the pasta's done.

She stands aside and watches him drain the pasta, add the cheese sauce, pour the mixture into a casserole dish, top it all with breadcrumbs he mixed with a little olive oil, and then slide it all into the oven. When he's done, she hands him a glass of wine and follows him into the living room. They sit; he notices she's brought the bottle.

They haven't even started talking yet by the time they both need a refill. He pours so she talks. "I've never baked cookies since that day."

"Not for nothing, Carter, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing."

"I always really liked baking," she says sadly.

"You're not exactly long on time these days," he says in what he hopes is a helpful way.

"I've got nothing _but_ time," she says.

And he thinks he sort of understands. Because when he's not in the mountain, not on a mission, he's got nothing but time, too.

She doesn't say much after that, and he's not sure how to not be an asshole when it comes to figuring out what's going on in a woman's head – especially when he can't use sex to coax out whatever it she's feeling. He's always been a lot better with his hands than he is with his words and that extends to every part of his life. He finds himself in the weird limbo where he wants to do things with her that he _can't_ do with her, but she keeps looking at him like she's just a woman and he's just a man and he knows she's not even doing it on purpose.

When he can smell their dinner he knows it's done and he shepherds her into the dining room where she takes the seat she took the first time – the one he usually sits in, coincidentally. A few moments later he brings her a steaming plate of macaroni and cheese and watches as she carefully separates the elbows from one another so they'll cool more quickly.

"It's good that you're going away with your dad," he says, bringing them full circle in forty minutes.

"I guess so. I don't really know what to say to him."

"He's your dad. You don't have to say anything to him. Just spend some time with him."

"What if he asks about Martouf?"

"He won't." Jack knows he won't because Jack wouldn't if she didn't keep bringing him up. Jacob didn't want to hear about _feelings _any more than Jack did – though for entirely different reasons if he had to guess.

She twirls her wineglass in by the stem and he watches the red liquid swirl around. When he'd bought the wine he hadn't just ingested a trippy Goa'uld brew, but he finds he's not too bothered by the comparison. Either way, he's thinking things he shouldn't be thinking but still resisting saying them.

She takes a bite. "Wow. This is really good."

"It's macaroni and cheese, Carter. Not magic."

"I eat a lot of yogurt and popcorn, sir. This is _really_ good."

They've switched back to the _sir_ portion of the evening so he finally feels like he's back on solid ground. He still has no idea why she appeared on his doorstep. Not really, anyway. But, like last time, she seems to have found what she was looking for without much help from him.

Either way, he finds himself hunting for interesting additions to his pantry next time he's at the grocery store – surprising ingredients and another good bottle of wine.


	3. Spaghetti and Meatballs

_**Author's Note: Post A Hundred Days. How could this **_**not** _**be angsty?**_

* * *

She stands on his front stoop for so long he finally breaks in on her train of thought by pulling the door open and waving her inside.

"You look like hell, Carter."

Her chin wobbles and she takes a deep, steadying breath before thrusting a plate of handmade meatballs and jar of spaghetti sauce at him and shouldering by. She doesn't go to the kitchen. She makes for the bathroom. He curses and closes the door.

He's poured the wine and put the meatballs in the oven by the time she reappears.

"I, uh… I'm sorry," he says.

"No, you're right. I haven't been sleeping."

"You've been sitting up nights learning to make meatballs?" he guesses.

She shoots him a caustic look. "My next door neighbor made them. Apparently I looked pathetic enough to warrant a meal delivery."

"Don't people usually bring food that's already…I dunno…cooked?" Anyway, now that she's mentioned it, she does look kind of pathetic – in that sweet stray sort of way. He should have noticed how head shy she's become, the dark circles under her eyes, the way she looks like a stiff wind or stiff drink would put her down.

He doesn't know what to tell her. He doesn't know know how to make it right. Between the emotional gamut he ran on Edora and the covert mission he's just been tapped for, there's little he can say.

_Hey, Carter, I don't know what it is we're doing here, but I can't pretend you don't make eyes at me sometimes and I can't pretend I don't try to make you smile at me all the time; because I settled for a woman on another planet and actually started to have feelings for her. Oh, and while we're at it, this is probably the last time you're ever going to show up at my place for something non-work related because I'm about to treat you like the asshole I've always tried to prove I'm really not. Wanna hit the mattresses just in case we've really got a spark so we can enjoy it before I screw it up?_

He figures he's probably a presumptuous ass. Whatever she's doing is kid-stuff; maybe a little harmless flirting with a safe CO, nothing serious, just a little fun and ego bump. Hell, maybe Carter just likes a little illicit thrill. Maybe she's just another in a long line taken by good looks and the Eagle on his shoulder. Anyway, he's not stupid. He'd seen the kicked-puppy look on her face when he'd walked away from her. So yeah, she's probably working on a _bit_ of a crush. But, he is too, so it's not like he can fault her for it.

Sure, that could be it. But that's not really Carter's style. She's not frivolous. And she really does look like hell. That doesn't seem very not-serious. Hell, maybe it's just his ego talking and whatever it is that's eating her doesn't have anything to do with his careless dismissal of her ability to re-plot the future of physics.

"They tell me you invented something while I was gone."

"A particle accelerator. Yes."

"That sounds…fancy."

"Not fancy. Just difficult."

"You know, I…uh…I didn't thank you for—"

"Can you not?" she exhales the words like she'd been holding her breath too long. In a way, maybe she had.

"Carter?"

"It never occurred to me that you didn't need to come home, you know? And I get it – you came to terms with a new life, and you met someone and started over. But we worked _really_ hard to bring you back and you just walked away from me…" she trails off uncomfortably as if she's said too much. "You walked away from _us," _she tries again, "like we'd just ruined your schedule. It's not about _thank you_, Colonel, it's about being god damned grateful that there are some people here who thought enough of you to…" she stops and turns away from him, shoulders heaving.

He waits for the smell of ground beef and spices to permeate the air, to give him something to pull her focus to, but it's too early yet.

She slugs back the glass of wine he poured for her and then takes off for the front door.

"Damn it," he chases after her, "Carter!"

He catches up to her next to her car. "You came here to talk, right?" She won't meet his eyes, but she nods. "Okay. So talk. Yell. Do whatever you have to do."

She laughs mirthlessly. "I don't _have_ to do any of it. Because tomorrow, the sun will come up over the SGC and you'll still be the Colonel and I'll still be the Major and none of this is going to matter. It _doesn't matter_, anything I say here tonight."

As much as he hates to admit it, she's right. Especially knowing what's coming. In a few days' time, he's going to turn her world upside-down with the theft of ally technology and it won't matter if he takes steps tonight to repair their relationship or not. Because she's going to push him after all that happens, and he's going to have to hurt her. But as advantageous as it may be, he can't make himself go out of his way to hurt her tonight. Not when she's obviously already hurting so badly.

He reaches out, fingers the ends of her hair, she ducks away. "C'mon," he says, "we'll eat dinner and you can just be mad at me."

"I am mad," she says but follows him up his front walk. "And I'm glad you're back."

"Whether you believe me or not, I am too."

"What about Laira?" she says as she settles onto the stool in the kitchen.

He tenses at the sound of the other woman's name. He spent every day with her for more than three months and he feels her absence sharply, especially in the space he'd fantasized about bringing her to; more, knowing that if he'd met her on Earth she's exactly the kind of woman who would have turned his head. She was kind and caring, more than a little attractive, strong and respectable. He had started to feel towards her the way he had, at one point, felt about his wife. Not the same strong feelings that led him to marriage, but at least the ones that got him to those strong feelings in the first place. Hell, for all he really knows, she's pregnant and he's missing another chance to be a father. But thinking down that road isn't going to do any of them any favors, least of all him.

He puts water on to boil and pours the sauce into a pot with some spices before he answers. "I guess it's not really important anymore, is it?"

"I got the impression you two had gotten…close."

"We had," he says with finality she respects.

He'd had an uncomfortable conversation with the base CMO about alien STDs, too, but there's no need to tell her that. After that was another uncomfortable conversation about how close, exactly, he'd gotten to his second-in-command. Being that he could still answer the Carter question honestly, said second-in-command didn't need to know about that either. These little dinners of theirs, while not _entirely_ against the rules, were private. Not secret. At least not right now. Not for a while if he gets that uncomfortable kind of lucky where she's heartsick over his dalliance with Laira. Especially not after how personally she's going to take the events of the next however long it takes to flush out the bad guys.

"You would have stayed," she says and he wonders if it's sadness, resignation or the death of something that tinges her voice.

"I might not have had a choice."

"Didn't it occur to you that we'd come by ship if we couldn't recover the gate?"

"Either way I was in for an extended vacation. Which part pissed you off? That I prepared to stay or that I didn't immediately jump through the gate to come home?"

"I don't know," she says hotly.

"Well, that's not helpful at all!" Then he realizes he's shouting at her and crushing a box of spaghetti in his hands. She doesn't look very sure in her anger. He thinks he probably doesn't either.

"Can't I make a salad or something?" she asks in the same angry voice.

He spins around and starts rooting through the fridge. He's shoved a cucumber, a bell pepper, a carrot and a bunch of radishes into her hands when he starts to chuckle. It's been a lot of years since he's fought with a woman over something he doesn't understand. Even so, he remembers incongruous statements thrown into heated discussion and it feels so damn familiar it hurts in the good places.

"What?" she huffs at him and then starts laughing too.

They're quiet while she makes little salads in his soup bowls and he makes the pasta and fiddles with the seasonings in the sauce. She pours him another glass of wine when he finishes his and somewhere along the way they swap glasses but he doesn't say anything.

He likes the way they move around his kitchen together. She's useless with anything that requires heat and he finds that surprising, incongruous, and a little convenient, but he really likes that she's not fucking perfect at every damn thing. She stands her ground when he brushes close, turns her hips to give him space but doesn't move her feet. Mostly he likes the way she doesn't flinch away when his wrist brushes against her waist.

She sits in his chair again, he puts a plate down in front of her, she pushes meatballs around in the sauce, and he doesn't give her too hard a time about pretending to eat.

"Thanks," he says, when she slides a hunk of cooked tomato off the tines of her fork onto his plate. He knows the texture makes her shiver.

She smiles.

"No, Sam. Thanks. For figuring out how to get me home."

She smiles again, ducks her head and blushes. "You're welcome."

Damn it. Damn it, shit and sonuvabitch. He wants to say something to her, anything to let her know that the things he's about to say and do aren't really him and that they have nothing to do with her. He wants her to blush when she looks at him and he wants her to do it with that smile, the one with a hint of her tongue behind her teeth. He wants to tell her he'd pour her another glass of wine if things were different. But he can't tell her that and he certainly can't do it.

To be safe he doesn't say anything. He doesn't offer her a bowl of the salted caramel ice cream he'd bought with her in mind. When she leaves he tries not to smile too softly, tries in the small ways he can to ease the transition.

The next day at the grocery store he doesn't buy the wine she likes because she won't be showing up for dinner any time soon.


	4. French Silk Pie

Samantha Carter would do things for chocolate that Jack tries not to think about. Standing on her porch in the pouring rain with a French Silk pie in his hands is a good time to remind himself of that policy. It takes him a good three minutes to work up the courage to ring her doorbell and in that time he realizes: one, that she hasn't said a solitary word to him that wasn't work related since he'd stolen the Tollan technology; two, that it's nearing too damn late to be knocking on a woman's door unless your only intention is to take her to bed; and three, that if he looks through the frosted glass of her front door he can see her standing at the end of the long hall between her kitchen and the door, staring at him standing in the dim light on her porch with a pie plate in his hand.

She turns and wanders off and he figures he's busted enough _and_ he has chocolate, so he lets himself into her home. He's surprised by the classical music that plays – something electric and…violin…but traditional, and it seems strange and wrong and sets his skin prickling but it's also familiar and comfortable in a way that settles his stomach.

He finds her in the kitchen, leaning against her counter. She's in pajamas but he really can't get past the big, fluffy socks on her feet to fully appreciate the way her breasts really are just perfectly fucking round even without a bra, and okay…so maybe he can appreciate both.

"I brought pie," he says and thrusts it in her direction like he's a twelve year old boy giving flowers to a girl for the first time.

"I see that," she says and feigns disinterest as she peers at the whipped cream topping.

"It's French Silk," he cajoles.

She shrugs but grabs a spoon out of the cutlery drawer on her way past him into the living room.

They sit on the floor, he holds the pie between them balanced on one hand and she digs her spoon right into the center. The sound she makes in the back of her throat when the chocolate hits her tongue is going to fuel the daydreams he shouldn't be having for far longer than he's even willing to admit to himself. It's good chocolate. He should know. He made the pie.

She takes another bite, licks the chocolate out of the bowl of the spoon, then hands him the utensil. He takes it, he uses it; he feels unworthy as his tongue curls around the metal that was just in her mouth.

She swipes at the whipped cream with a finger when he retains the spoon for another bite and he tries not to focus on the way that finger disappears between her lips. Going rogue, even undercover, messes with his balance, his good sense and his libido and he knows from past experience it can take weeks to find his equilibrium. He wishes a little for the old days when he had a wife or the wherewithal to hire a professional because it seemed a lot easier to fuck his way to equipoise than it seems to watch Samantha Carter eat chocolate and pretend he wouldn't throw both their careers away if she even started to say she wanted him just a little bit the way he wants her. He knows part of the way he wants her is wrapped up in the flood of testosterone but he knows most of it isn't and it's that _most of_ part that's scaring the ever loving shit out of him.

These meals they share started out as her looking for something and quickly became doorways into the parts of himself that he wishes he had more control over. She sticks her finger into the chocolate custard and he wonders if he really _just_ wants to fuck her because the blue of her eyes make him remember a conversation over a fancy candlelit dinner that ended a year later in "I do."

But he doesn't love Samantha Carter. If he did, he reasons, he wouldn't have hurt her the way he hurt her and they wouldn't be sitting on her living room floor eating French Silk pie while she still doesn't talk to him. No, it's gotta be the testosterone, the loneliness, the fact that he hasn't been laid since Laira and if he's being honest, Edoran women were a hell of a lot less participatory than he'd grown to appreciate in the almost thirty years he's been having sex.

She shifts and pulls one of her knees up in front of her, wraps her arms around a leg covered in stretchy grey material and cocks her head to the side. "Not that the pie isn't good, but…what are you doing here?"

He stalls for time and takes another bite of the pie. She liberates the spoon from his hands and he's both sad and a little grateful to not have to watch her eat more of it with her fingers.

"I figure I owe you an apology, Carter."

"So it's French Silk apology pie?"

"It's _you deserve to kick my ass but please don't_ French Silk pie."

She laughs a little. "You apologized," she says with a shrug, "and you were undercover."

"Then why are you not talking to me?"

She sobers and concentrates on the pie. They've eaten a little hole out of the center of it and he tries not to think of the pie as a metaphor and mostly fails. "Have you ever heard the saying that there's a lot of truth in a joke? Maybe there's truth in the things we say when we've got something to hide behind, too."

"Carter," he starts, but she cuts him off.

"You said you haven't been yourself since you met me." She takes a bite and passes him the spoon. "So, I guess I want to know, which part isn't you? Any of it? Or just the stuff that's just between us?"

He wonders if she's talking about just their professional interactions or if it's whatever these little dinners have become she's worried about. Either way he's lied to her, before the mission, during it, or after – there's no winning and he's not sure which loss is the best.

They work together. They do it well. It's important that she trust him. Their feelings, whatever they may actually be, are ether and they're disallowed. It would be easy to preserve the part of all of this that they're allowed to have, to maintain the professional relationship that he absolutely can't jeopardize. He can walk this whole thing back out of the danger zone she doesn't even know they've entered.

He can sacrifice whatever it is they're building here for the greater good.

He can.

"You and me," he confirms. And he's trying to figure out how to tell her that really, it's all about the two of them anyway because they're the ones who have a whole quire of paper that dictates how they're supposed to relate to one another and he doesn't actually follow a single damn rule.

The color drains from her face. She stands up and backs away from him. "So, you came here to apologize," she reminds him flatly.

He puts the pie on her coffee table. "I did. I am."

She crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow at him and he wonders idly if girls learn that look for credit because Sara used to give him the same one and it usually preceded his spending the night on the couch.

"Okay," she says dully, "you apologized."

He's been in the military long enough to know when he's been dismissed. She follows him to the front door, presumably so she can lock it behind him. He tries not to notice how her eyes shine wetly when he turns to her before he goes. He stops with the threshold between them, "It's not a bad thing, Sam. You gave me someone to be nice to."

He watches as her shoulders unburden just a little. "Thank you, sir."

"I know this isn't okay yet," he says and hopes she realizes that he means the part of the sentence he can't speak, _but it will be; I'll make it be_.

"Well, I've got a whole weekend and French Silk pie to work it out," she say and spares him a half grin.

When she closes the door, she turns off the light in the hall and he loses sight of her right away. Usually he's wondering if she got what she came for and now he understands when she says she's not sure. He came for one thing, discovered something else, and is leaving just grateful that he'll have an opportunity to keep trying fit her. In his truck his grocery list is on a post-it note stuck to the dash. He scribbles out the question mark he'd penned after the word _Wine_ and hopes for the best.


	5. Plum Nothing

It'd been a long time since Edora and the following events that Sam still liked to gloss over even in her own mind. It'd been a long time, even, since the colonel had shown up on her doorstop with a pie, an apology and some thoughts that the consumption of rest of the pie over a weekend didn't even begin to help her decipher. If they were home, she'd grab something unexpired out of the depths of her freezer and drive around aimlessly. More often than not she'd get ahold of herself and find her way back home. Sometimes, she landed on his doorstep and he'd look at her like she was a little pathetic, but he'd usher her into his kitchen, pour her a glass of wine, and cook her a meal like it was normal, what she did.

She, as well as anybody, knew that her actions were not at all normal. She floundered between not understanding him at all and understanding him in a way that made her feel things she didn't know how to deal with. She'd always been a lone wolf – even when she was with someone.

But there was no good way to tell him what was on her mind; not without changing their dynamic. She didn't think he'd dump her off the team for confessing what she was quickly becoming apt to describe as inappropriate emotions concerning him. He was more likely to bumble uncomfortably and then pretend like he'd never heard it. But, she could be wrong; he might be exactly the kind of man that dealt with sticky emotional situations by making them go away.

Except…he _had_ shown up on her doorstep with that pie. And then there'd been that whole strange moment when they'd eaten it while sitting on the floor in her living room while sharing a spoon and that's just _not_ the sort of thing someone did with their subordinate officer even if the subordinate officer _did_ initiate it. So maybe there was something going on inside him, too.

Either way, after the pie and the emotional penance she'd made him pay, Sam was wary about forking over a handful of native fruit on the planet they'd inhabit for the rest of the week. She'd been showing up with food long enough now that he'd understand what was happening. Well, as much as either of them understood what was really happening.

He looked at her a little strangely when she set the three small, round fruits onto his palm.

She stood next to him where he was seated on the bank of a small pond watching the sunset. She shifted from one foot to the other to expel a little of her nervous energy.

Finally he looked from the fruit to her face. "Carter, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I don't exactly have a fully stocked kitchen here. And, even if I did, what am I supposed to do with three alien plums?"

She shrugged. "You've done more with less."

"Yeah," he paused and she couldn't help but wonder if it was for dramatic effect. "Somebody needs to teach you how to grocery shop."

"I don't cook, sir."

"I've noticed." He started spinning the fruit in his hand like Baoding balls. "Where's Teal'c?"

"Bathing, I think." He had asked for privacy and set off in the direction of the warm springs they'd discovered on their second day. He could be doing any number of things. Sam stuck with the bathing idea.

"Sir—"

He cut her off with a quiet interjection. "That's not how this is supposed to go."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're supposed to get whatever it is off your chest before you go back to treating me like I'm just the colonel."

"_Just_ the colonel?"

He huffed and looked like he was about to say something but then changed his mind.

"I owe you an apology."

"For what? Disobeying my order and getting yourself and Teal'c into a mess I'd ordered you out of?"

She was momentarily taken aback. Considering their success, she didn't think he'd be mad about that. But that wasn't the point. That wasn't the point at all. Hell, until he'd brought it up, she hadn't known what the point was either. Suddenly, it was quite clear. "You really don't have much faith in me, do you?"

The way his eyebrows climbed his forehead was almost comical as he turned his body towards her. She towered over him, standing the way she was, and she couldn't decide if it was really enough upper hand to continue the thought the way his face was imploring her to. "Excuse me?" he finally said when it was clear she was raging an internal war regarding whether or not to continue speaking.

"You know, it was really…" she clamped her jaws shut and breathed for a few moments. It took a lot for her to ask him, "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

He deflated a little and she realized he'd thought they were in whatever little safe zone they'd created for each other and that the realization that they weren't had stung him a little. "Okay," he said slowly. "Go ahead, Major."

She barreled ahead before she lost her nerve or the permission to share it. "It was really fucking insulting that you didn't think, not even for a _moment_, that I'd figure out how to get you home."

He opened his mouth to speak but she forged right ahead.

"And then you go out of your way to hurt me – not Major Carter, _me_, Sam – when what you could have done, _should_ have done, was level with me. Orders or no. I'm your second in command. I'm your _friend_. And we…" They what? She didn't really know. "You could have trusted me. You _should_ trust me."

She took a step toward him and it forced him to lean back a little to look up at her. That was good. Putting him slightly off balance helped her feel like she was leveling the playing field.

"And then, as soon as the Asgard asked, you were going to _blow yourself up_. Do you know how crazy that is? You point blank _told_ me not come help you. I'm your second in command!" She said again as if it were some kind of mantra. It was at that point she realized she was yelling at him. "I blow shit up, _sir,_" she spit the honorific out as a sibilant epithet, "and I'm good at it. But rather than ask me for my help, rather than depend on me to do my _job, _you make some boneheaded decision to _die_?"

He set the fruit down on the soft grass next to him and leaned back onto his palms so he was looking her dead in the eye. "The plan wasn't to die. The plan was to not take you with me if I did."

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at him but he continued, unfazed. "And, yes, _Major_. My orders were from the _General_. Covert means covert. It means you don't tell anybody. No matter how much you—" he cut himself off. He made an angry sort of face that looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek. He rose to his feet, more gracefully than she'd have thought he could. He had several inches on her but never used his size against her – not ever before – not until he leaned into her personal space and forced her to look _up_ into his flashing eyes. "And I thought we'd solved the whole Edora thing, already!"

"Me too," she shouted at him. This wasn't the first time they'd raised their voices in frustration and anger with one another. It felt _good_.

"Well, apparently not!"

"Why didn't you think I would save you?" she spit at him fully cognizant that the last time she'd asked him a similar question she'd couched her injury in the safety of the team. She no longer felt that need.

"Carter, do you have any idea how _impossible_ what you did was? You created technology other scientists on Earth are still dreaming about. I know you're good. How the hell was I supposed to know you were _that_ good?"

"Because it was _you_, you son of a bitch," she shouted at him like he was stupid. "Because it was _you_," she said again, quietly, with revelation in her voice she wasn't prepared to examine too closely.

He looked at her intently, searching her face for something he couldn't seem to find. "Carter, are we going to have a problem here?"

She could feel the blood drain out of her face then rush back to flush her cheeks. That was the second time someone had asked her that question about him. The first time she'd answered it, she'd lied through her teeth, certain she'd get herself together when she was faced with the man rather than the memory. She lied through her teeth again, for reasons she was only partly clear on at the moment but that would become clearer when she wasn't stranded on a deserted almost-paradise planet. "No, sir. No problem."

She wanted very badly to believe she saw what she thought she saw flit across his face. She wanted to believe she saw a little disappointment there underneath his clear relief.

He put his hands on his hips and cast his eyes around until they landed on the fruit. He leaned over and picked it up, held it in his hand in the space between them. "You know I can't make anything with these, right?"

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She damn sure didn't ask him if he meant the fruit or the brewing emotions. Either way, she wasn't getting anything. Not that evening.


	6. Red Meat

_**This one is set post The Other Side.**_

* * *

Jack O'Neill makes a lot of difficult decisions. Sometimes those decisions cost the lives of the people on the other side of the war – either a real one or a more metaphorical one he tries to make a lot more black and white than he knows it is. When he's really lucky, his decisions don't cost the lives of people he cares about. Other times, his decisions write checks with things more tenuous than life versus death.

It's been a long damn several days and all he wants is his couch, a beer, and maybe a ball game. When he blinks he can still see that stunned and disappointed look on Carter's face burned on the inside of his eyelids. Against his better judgment he corners her in one of the hallways. She's in uniform, he's in his civvies with his car keys in his hand.

"I'm going home."

"That's good, sir."

"That was a helluva mission."

"Yeah," she says with a dissatisfied-sounding exhale. "It was."

She's got something on the sleeve of her blouse, right at her wrist. He should know; he's staring at that spot awfully hard. It's her skin but it's not her face and he's fighting himself with everything he has to keep from touching just a little bit of the small selection of exposed skin available and he realizes he's got to get the hell out of the mountain – this mission's screwed with his head more than it should have. It's all just been too damn much for too damn long and he can't quite find the right balance. It doesn't help that he usually counts on what's between her ears to help him find the balance and it's not a huge leap from there to imagine he might also be able to find it between her legs.

God, he's got to get the hell out of the mountain before he does something stupid.

"You coming for dinner tonight?"

Like that.

She tilts her head a little while she looks at him. He imagines that the skin on her throat turns a little pink as she tells him she'll come. He thinks maybe right now neither one of them should use the word _come_ around each other because he really can't be trusted.

He flees before he grows hard in her presence. He wonders if she feels the tension. There's a tenuous emotional connection between them he knows she's aware of – he's known for certain since they were stranded on that planet, basically alone for a week because Teal'c, apparently, is a huge fan of baths or something. Probably, he's a huge fan of leaving Sam and Jack alone together because he can't understand why the two officers aren't allowed to dissipate the tension in the same way Jaffa are allowed. Jack doesn't have the wherewith to tell Teal'c that the only private, no-rules hand-to-hand he wants with Carter isn't going to end in reaffirming the chain of command.

He's pretty sure Teal'c knows that, anyway.

Later, once he's had a hot shower and tumbler of something brown and oaky, she shows up with a grocery bag. When she sets it down, he rifles through it and finds a couple of really nice steaks, potatoes and haricot vert.

He looks up at her as she licks her lips and he realizes this was a very bad idea.

She seems mostly oblivious to the fact that he's picturing pressing her up against the pantry door with his body. Their heights are so suitably matched that he _dreams_ about crowding her into a wall and pressing his hips against her to see if she'll make the same sound for him that she makes for chocolate. She seems not to notice that he's barely tethered so he turns away from her before she clues in.

"Is this something you can work with?" she asks him, sweeping a hand in an arc indicating the groceries he'd unpacked and scattered across his counter.

It's like she's punched him in the gut as he thinks back to holding a handful of fruit between the two of them while telling her they're shit out of luck for dinner and other things that now they both know they're both thinking about. He wonders if she's as clueless as she acts about how his body deals with excess ambivalence. Then she glances at his mouth, at his chest, at his groin and he doesn't wonder anymore.

But knowing she knows takes the edge of the worst of his nervous energy and when he exhales, he finally feels like it takes. He leans against the counter across the room from her, crosses his arms over his chest and tries to be unselfconscious about his flagging erection and mostly succeeds. For her part she continues to assess him boldly which is probably why he's able to maintain the confidence he has; if she's not going to be embarrassed, he's damn sure not going to be in her stead.

He studies her intently, watches how her eyes continue to bounce between his and other parts of him, then crosses the room, brushing by her so closely the fabric of their shirts drag against one another, and then he reaches into that pantry to grab a roll of tin foil. He leaves her with instructions to wash, pierce and wrap the potatoes while he goes to tend to the grill.

He takes his time and eventually she appears at his elbow with two glasses of red wine in one hand and foil-wrapped potatoes in the other. Once he's got them situated on the grill with far more care and attention than they probably required, he leans back against his deck railing with one of the glasses of wine.

"So, I'm thinking maybe we've got a problem here."

She bites her lip and then takes a swallow of wine before she answers him. "Yeah. Me too."

He watches the wheels turn for her and doesn't offer her anything more. Part of him wonders if she has a solution.

"I didn't mean for this to happen, you know."

"I know, Carter. Me either."

"But, the stuff that gets me isn't the same stuff that gets you."

She's right. She's dealing with the emotional stuff and, right now, he's dealing with the hormonal stuff. "Is that better?"

She huffs with some sort of relieved exasperation that makes him want to smile a little. "I honestly don't know." She takes a step closer to him and that makes him nervous all over again. "So what do we do now?"

_I take you to bed and we get the worst of this out of our systems. Then we do it again anytime the pressure gets to be too much. It's a helluva bad release valve but it's got its perks._ "I know this seems like the sort of thing I should decide, but you understand why it has to be you, right?"

She licks her lips again and he thinks she's doing it on purpose. She breathes deeply and the long-sleeve t-shirt she's wearing pulls across her chest. He can see the outline of dog tags where they press up against the swell of her right breast and the way her nipples are hard and he can't decide if it's the chill in the air or the heat between them. "Yeah," she says and it takes him a moment to drag his eyes away from the dark green fabric and remember what it was he'd asked her in the first place.

The smell of charcoal hits him upside the face and then the cool breeze ruffles the hair at his temples.

"I don't always make good choices," she says.

He thinks she knows what she's saying. He knows she's the kind of woman who speeds first and pays tickets later, carries too much cash in her pocket and sometimes flirts hard with a pool cue in her hand so it's not a huge stretch to believe she's probably capable of breaking a few regs. But he's not going to ask her to. And if _she_ asks _him_, well, he's man enough to question her motives while he's taking off his pants. If it comes to it.

Except, "Yeah, Carter, you do. When it matters, you do."

She sighs. "Yeah. I do."

The light from the dining room barely slices onto the back porch and catches the blue in her eye. It's been so much for so long that he doesn't even try to talk himself out of it when the "C'mere," makes its way from his brain through his lips.

She's pressed up against him before either can think better of it, her feet and his like the teeth of a zipper, her thigh pressed against his groin, her breasts flattened against his chest, her hot breath against his ear. When he hardens again she shifts her hips a little from his right to his left and her thigh brushes across him in a way that would have, before this conversation, felt like the worst kind of tease and now feels like a gift.

He wraps his arms all the way around her so the fingertips of his left hand just barely press into the side of her right breast and she leans into him a little and he realizes he's got a thigh between her legs, too. If they're not careful, they could really… or maybe that would be just careful enough. He doesn't know. So he shifts into her a little harder and _yeah…_ She _does_ make the same sound for him that she makes for chocolate and because she does, and because he can feel it from his toes to his throat, he allows himself the luxury of opening his mouth against the cords of her neck. Her pulse thrums against his tongue and she's panting against his ear and if one or the other of them doesn't get ahold of themselves soon, he's going to take her right there on the deck with the smell of charcoal around them and nothing but moonlight and saliva on her skin.

Like that thought telegraphed to her through the flat of his tongue, she takes a deep and shuddering breath before pulling her upper body away from him. She meets his eye before pulling her hips away, too, and stepping back from him. She backs up several steps until she's next to her wine glass, forgotten on the deck railing six feet away from him.

He's old enough that spontaneous erections aren't really a thing, so he doesn't dress left as methodically as he once did. That means he's got to reach down and adjust himself through his jeans and he really, really likes that she watches but doesn't blush when he does it. He notices the way she hugs her arm around her chest and surreptitiously rubs the thin, warm skin of her inner wrist across her nipples, easing what he can only imagine must be a similar sort of ache to the one he's just relieved.

It's been a long time since he's been this turned on with a woman he wasn't taking to bed. It's frustrating but titillating; he'd forgotten what the slow burn of the dance felt like.

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and he can't help but watch the way her thighs press together. It's nice to know she's no better off than he is but it's also torture to know that he's so hard and she's so wet and they're just going to let the tension dissolve into their bellies and, maybe if he's lucky, she'll let him lick her lips the way she's been doing all night.

Eventually, the overwhelming arousal _does_ dissipate and he's able to finish cooking them dinner. The buttery-soft steak is more suggestive on his tongue than his keyed up libido is really equipped to deal with, but it's good beef and she looks flushed and tousled and so very hot that he really does get to enjoy every minute. They're even able to talk about inconsequential things and it's more than halfway through dinner when he realizes they're talking about themselves and not about their work.

When it's time to go – far past time, really – she stands in his entryway with her purse and she doesn't let him kiss her, not that he tries very hard, and he understands why.

"We're going to figure this out. It's only a problem if we let it be a problem."

He thinks that's probably his line, but he'll let her have it. In this situation, she's in command. "The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one, right?" he offers with a rueful grin.

When she smiles at him she flashes him her teeth and he relaxes a little. The pressure's been released, just a little – just enough – that he thinks they can get through the next day, and the one after, and the next mission and next scary/bad moment in a healthy way that doesn't include him pressing her against the first available solid surface and taking so many decisions out of their hands. When she leaves, she's still smiling and so is he.


	7. Chicken

He knew she was coming. After the way they stood on either side of the force shield and looked at each other, it was inevitable. The thing was, he didn't think he was dealing with _emotions, _but it turned out there were a whole bunch of emotions involved that he wasn't sure how to deal with.

When she did arrive, it was with a bottle and nothing else.

"If that's supposed to be dinner," he said, "we're in trouble."

She looked down at the bottle in her hand. "It's good Scotch. We're not in that much trouble."

Against his better judgment he let her in. "I meant I'm not sure we should be drinking that tonight."

She took her coat off. "I know that's what you meant."

He led her into the kitchen anyway. Ever since their _whatever _had started, he'd been prepared. He pulled some chicken thighs out of the freezer and handed them to her. "Six minutes on defrost."

It might have been fine if it hadn't been for those damn zay-whatever detector tests. Leave it in the room. Sure. Piece of cake. "Why don't you open that bottle?"

She cleared her throat and wiped her palms on her thighs. "Okay."

He grabbed two tumblers and a little ice.

While she poured he watched her. He wasn't supposed to love another woman again and he definitely wasn't supposed to love this woman, but if he was honest with himself, he _was _loving her. It was so easy at first when he'd just wanted her. Want was easy to push down and he was a strong man. But love? The last time he loved it didn't go so well. He'd been in love with his wife before he married her, while he was married, and, if he's honest, for quite a while after. He never made the decision to love easily which was why it was so shocking that it happened without his conscious decision.

There was just something about her. She was impossible not to love. She had to be because he hadn't meant for this to happen, but it did.

The microwave dinged. He set her to work with a knife, an onion and some mushrooms. He sliced the chicken thighs into even strips, thankful he sprang for boneless since he wasn't sure he could trust his hands to do that kind of precision work at the moment.

There were so many things he needed to say to her. _Are you sure about leaving it in the room? Is that going to be enough? Are you sure how you feel about me? I'm not sure I can be trusted. In any way. Why me? You know I'll love you right, don't you? _"Pasta or rice?"

She seemed to think about it with more gravity than the question deserved. "Pasta. It's quicker."

"You in a hurry, Carter?"

"The Scotch is already going to my head."

Oh. Great. Tipsy Carter in his kitchen on a Friday night after... after... she lost Martouf. She looked pretty upset about that considering what they'd just gone through. Was she sure how she felt? At the end of the day all he'd admitted to was caring about her more than he was supposed to. Even the fancy detector couldn't tell that there was more to his feelings than that. How good could it be?

"Pasta it is." He put some egg noodles on to boil. "You okay?"

"With what?" she asked like she knew it was a multi-part question.

"Pick something," he chickened out.

She sighed. "I'm not okay with Martouf dying. I'm not okay with the idea that any of our personnel could be compromised at any time and so easily. I'm... okay with us."

Well. And well again. "Okay with, what, exactly?"

"Leaving it in the room," she said. But she didn't sound so sure.

"You sure about that?"

"What other choice do we have?" she said with exasperation.

"I don't know!" he answered with just as much fire. "I just know this isn't supposed to be happening."

"None of it was supposed to be happening," she said softly, "but it was."

"Yeah." She was right. He should have nipped the whole thing in the bud, but it felt so good to get wound up around her.

"Just because it felt good doesn't make it right," she said as if she could read his mind.

He threw the onions and mushrooms into a saute pan with a little olive oil since he didn't know what to say.

"We should stop this." It killed him a little to say it.

"But we're not going to, are we?"

He loved her just a little more for accepting that what was happening wasn't something that just got set aside.

"I thought we were leaving it in the room."

"We can leave it in the room and still eat dinner, can't we?"

"Maybe. But we can't leave it in the room and have more nights like that one on the deck." He flashed back to her, pressed up against him, his mouth on her skin, his thigh between her legs, the sweet, guttural sound she made in his arms.

"No," she conceded. "You're probably right about that." Still, her eyes flickered down to the fly of his pants.

Jesus Christ but she made things hard. Difficult. She made them difficult. He turned back to his pan and stirred the vegetables. She didn't say anything else, but he could feel her watching him. He'd forgotten how nice it felt to just be in a room with someone and have their eyes on you. No need to say anything - though they had no shortage of things that needed to be said - but just to know you were with a person who didn't need to fill space, it was a good feeling.

"I haven't been on a date in a long time," she said after a long few minutes.

"Okay," he said for lack of something better even though inside he was doing backflips.

"You're not going to tell me how you feel about that?"

"Nope."

"Jesus," she breathed then he heard the ice in her glass clink. A few beats later, "I have no intention of going on any dates."

"Okay," he said again and resisted the urge to turn around.

"Still nothing?"

"Nope." And he pushed the chicken off the cutting board into the pan.

"Right. Look, I can play this as cool as you can. And we can just...do that."

"I'm not going to tell you what to do with your life, Carter."

"Jack, I just-"

"This can't happen."

"I thought you said it was up to me."

"And you said you wanted to leave it in the room!"

"Well, you did, too!"

"I know!"

"It was easier for you when it was just me having feelings for you, wasn't it?" she asked him sounding a little hurt.

He wasn't going to lie to her. "Yeah, it was."

"And now that you know you-"

"I never meant to make this difficult for you."

"I know that."

He finished the chicken and made a little sauce. He drained the noodles and she poured them more Scotch. He fixed the plates and put them on the table, she sat in his spot, the same way she usually did. They both picked at their food and made healthy inroads on the Scotch.

"Why don't we just... not do anything," she offered.

"What do you mean?"

"We'll just... we'll leave it in the room like we said, as much as we can. And we'll do... _this_... whenever we have to and we'll just... not make any waves."

"Is that okay with you?"

"Well, it's better than nothing."

He wasn't sure that was entirely true, but it was better than pretending like he didn't love her and it was better than watching her pretend like she didn't love him. Besides, they were usually really good outside the confines of his house. And he really liked the way she looked at him sometimes and he didn't want to take that look out of her eyes.

It was just... he was chicken. It would be too easy to screw the whole thing up.

So they ate their dinner in relative silence and when it was time for her to go, he helped her on with her coat. She pulled her hair out of her collar and he watched the way her fingers lifted the strands and wished it was _before_ like it was when she'd been pressed up against him on the deck. That night he'd have helped her move her hair.

When she was ready to walk out the door he said, "Sam? I have no intention of going on any dates, either."

She gave him an unsure half smile and left. And he knew she'd be back.

* * *

_**Author's Note: Beta'd by the fantastic fems, with all my thanks.**_


	8. Rack of Ribs and Acorn Squash

**_Summary: Their first real fight, well, it was a doozy._**

**_Episode: s04e09 Scortched Earth_**

**_Note: Because this episode just begged for some angst, and because it was right before _Beneath the Surface, _it just had to be done._**

* * *

It was a fierce pounding on his door that heralded her arrival. He already had the ribs in the oven. He was ambling his way to the front door when she flung it open.

"Is this how it's going to be now?"

"Carter-" he warned, low in his throat.

"No, not right now, Jack."

"C'mon into the kitchen," he said, resigned. It was a kitchen conversation coming on if he'd ever heard one.

She followed him in, stomping along behind him. Oh she was fired up.

"How could you?"

"How could I _not_?" he threw back at her. "I'm the one that has to make the tough calls.

"Maybe. But we all have to live with them."

He stopped at the counter, grabbed an acorn squash and tossed it to her with perhaps a little too much force. "You know what to do with that?"

"You know I don't!"

It was easier to fight about the food than it was to fight about the Enkarans. Against his better judgment he pulled a large knife out of a drawer and handed it to her. "Cut it in half."

"You _ordered_ me to end a species."

"Actually, I just told you to cut a squash in half."

"Damn it, Jack!"

"What the hell do you want from me, Sam?! Everything worked out."

"Luck," she said. "And you set the bomb even though Daniel was aboard the ship!" Her outrage was apparent; then, inexplicably, she settled, smooth like glass and he knew things were about to get worse. "What if it had been me?"

"You know, this is why we were supposed to leave it in the room."

"But we decided to do _this_ instead."

"Whatever this is, it doesn't seem to have as many perks as I envisioned." He regretted it as soon as he said it. He'd forgotten what it was like to fight with a... whatever she was to him. "Look, Sam, I-"

"I can't believe you just said that."

"I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

"Okay, so... how did you mean it?" she sounded cool and pragmatic. He didn't think that was a good thing.

He decided to try for honesty. Not usually his go-to in a fight with a woman, but he seemed to be trying lots of new things with her. "I just said it. I don't think I meant it at all."

"You don't _think _you meant it?"

"Damn it, I didn't mean it!"

"What sort of perks did you envision? We both knew what we were walking into. You're the one who said there couldn't be any more nights like the one on your deck. So what, exactly, did you envision?"

"Would you cut that thing up already?" he asked her, hoping to stall for a little time.

She set it down on the counter and whacked it into two inelegant pieces. "Fine. It's cut. Now. What did you envision?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, me either, but don't you dare think this is any easier for me than it is for you!"

"How would I know? It's not like we ever talk about it except when you're here."

"And that's my fault?"

"It's the way it has to be!" At that point he knew he was past mad and into something far more complicated.

She seemed unhappy with that answer and yet resigned to it. "What am I supposed to do with this thing, now?" she indicated the lopsided squash in front of her.

"Clean out the seeds." He got a dish out of a cabinet and set it on the counter next to her. "Then put it in here, cut side up." From the pantry he got brown sugar and salt and from the fridge he got butter. If they could just focus on dinner for a little while, maybe this thing between them wouldn't be over before it really got started.

He walked her through packing the squash with brown sugar then salting it and putting a pat of butter on top of each half. They covered the dish with wax paper and put it in the microwave. "Start with ten minutes," he told her, "and then we'll see what we've got."

She foraged in his kitchen for a bottle of wine and he got down two glasses. She poured them both a glass of the deep red, but he could see the gears turning in her head. With a glass in her hand she indicated the space between them. "We both knew _this_ was going to make everything out _there," _she swept her hand in a large arc towards the sky, "harder."

"Which is why we agreed to leave it in the room."

"Except, we didn't really, did we? Agree to leave it in the room? We agreed to leave it here."

"We agreed on both."

"We can't do both!" she reminded him unnecessarily. "So now what?"

"So now we have to decide. Either we're leaving it in the room and having dinner or we're leaving it here and... having dinner," he finished lamely. "But either way, we have to decide."

She was worth it to him, all of it - the wondering, the fear, the fighting. He just hoped he was worth it to her, too. They both had a lot to lose, and they had to be in it together or not at all.

"We're having squash for dinner?" she asked him instead of answering.

"And ribs."

"We should have something green," she decided. Rather unilaterally he thought, but she was already going through his refrigerator unearthing some green beans he'd forgotten he bought. He took them from her and started washing them.

"I'm not sorry I made the order, Sam. But I am sorry it was necessary."

"I'm not sorry you made the decision," she told him, shocking him. "I'm sorry you made it an order."

"You wouldn't have done it if I hadn't."

"Yes," she said, shocking him further. "I would have. I don't always agree with you, but I do respect you. And I know you made a tough call in a bad situation."

"But you were trying to talk me out of it."

"Of course I was!" she hollered at him. "It was a bad fucking situation. There were no wins," she said punctuating her sentence with a slash of her hand. "What did you envision?" she asked him again, quietly.

"I really don't know," he said. "Maybe more of what happened on the porch."

"Some sort of pressure valve," she offered.

"Yeah."

"Because this _hurts."_

"Yeah."

"I know." She took a sip of wine and looked thoughtful. "I'm sorry I came at you the way I did."

He waved her off. "I get it."

"But it wasn't right. I know you. I know the decision wasn't made lightly. And I know it wasn't personal. And I'd like to think you'd have blown the ship even if I was the one aboard."

"Jesus," he said, not knowing whether or not he'd have made the same decision if that were the case. Which was what scared him about what they're doing.

"We've got to figure out a way to make this work."

"I don't think this is something we can just negotiate."

"Why not?"

"Because it's never going to be that easy. Last time we said we were leaving it in the room and having dinner. But we know that's not how it happened or you wouldn't have stormed in here tonight the way you did."

"So... what?"

"So we just keep trying to make it work, and keep it from becoming a problem."

"You don't think it's already a problem?"

"No, I don't," he said seriously. "You trust me, right?"

"Yeah," she breathed. "I trust you."

"Then let's just..."

"Try," she finished for him. "Okay."

"And please keep in mind that I'm stupid, sometimes, and say things I haven't quite thought through."

"You've got to stop doing that," she told him, with a small smile.

He couldn't help but smile back at her. They managed to keep the peace and finish dinner: rack of ribs, acorn squash, and sauteed green beans. Through dinner they smoothed things out in a way that made them feel good and they talked about making their dinners a more regular, less stress-induced thing between them.

That night, when she left, she let him drop a kiss on the corner of her mouth and he thought that things had probably gotten as bad as they were going to get, at least for a little while, and that he was one lucky son of a bitch that she wasn't the type of woman to hold a grudge.

He was so confident that things were going to get better he put another bottle of the wine she liked on the grocery list. For the next time. Because next time they had dinner it wasn't going to be because things had gotten to be too much, it was going to be because they'd decided not to leave it in the room but to leave it in his house. And that was a much better plan.


	9. Lamb and Leftovers

It was dark when she showed up with lamb chops. "It was either lamb or pork," she said nervously like he cared one way or the other what they were having. He was just glad to see her, to have her close wearing something other than orange quilted pajamas. He fingered her new short haircut. Secretly, he preferred it shorter, not that he'd tell her that at this juncture.

"That's fine."

"I didn't even know where to look for the mint stuff, but I-"

"Sam," he said and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, "it's fine."

She apparently felt as discombobulated as he did. It was freeing to be on that damned planet, hidden away in the machinery rooms, able to talk and touch as they pleased. He kicked himself over and over again for not taking the opportunity to take her to bed - or bunk, as the case might have been - but it had felt both new and familiar in turns and there just never seemed to be the right moment. A lost moment, as it turned out. He wished the memory stamps worked in reverse. He wished he didn't remember their time together, the sweet way she'd touch him so casually, the way he couldn't even get her to touch him first when they were alone together. Though, in all fairness, the thing they were doing was rather new.

She leaned into him a little, the way she did when they were stamped and it felt so right to just pull her into his chest. It didn't feel wrong, it didn't feel forbidden, it didn't even feel other-worldly when he took the lamb from her and put it on the counter so he could pull her flush against him until he could feel her breathing against his throat. There was some measure of comfort in knowing that the thing between them wasn't tenuous, that it was something hardwired into both of them.

"It's all just fine," he said into her hair.

"Then why doesn't it feel fine?"

"Feels fine to me," he said giving her a little squeeze.

She thumped him on the back, "Jack!"

"No, really," he said disarmingly. "Tell me this feels wrong."

She contemplated on it then decided, "I can't." She ran her hands from his shoulder blades down to the small of his back. "This is what we've been missing."

"We agreed no more nights like the porch."

"Well, I'm disagreeing now. Besides, there's a lot between this,"she held him tighter, "and the heat."

"You sure that's what you want?" It was what he wanted, especially after feeling the way she pressed against him on that planet when it didn't matter, the way she'd slid her tongue into his mouth like it was normal. "This? The in-between? The... heat?"

She pressed herself closer against him. "I'm sure." Her body remembered even if she wouldn't let her brain.

She shifted and he couldn't help the way he went hard at the pressure her words and her body exerted on his. She didn't back away, she didn't acknowledge it bodily in any way. She hummed low in the back of her throat, "I like you this way," she said and just exhaled against him.

He liked it too. Liked what generally came next even more, but he did like the way she felt pressed up against his erection. "Me too." She felt so soft against him, against all of him.

"You want to talk about it?"

"What?" she asked him. "This?" and pressed her hips against his. "Or the planet?"

He chuckled. "Either?"

"No," she sighed. "But we should."

"Okay," he said and tightened his hold on her.

"It's just, I think we said it all already."

"Sir," he said quietly against her ear.

"Out there," she agreed. "Here? Jack."

"I like it here."

"Me too. Here is better."

"For this? It is."

"But there are good things about out there, too," she reminded him.

"It's getting harder to remember that."

"We can't forget. We belong out there."

"It feels like we belong in here, too."

"It does," she agreed.

"Want to cook dinner?" he asked her.

"In a minute," she said and shifted against him until he was nestled between her legs.

He enjoyed it for a few heartbeats and a gentle press into the apex of her thighs then told her, "This is dangerous."

"Doesn't feel dangerous."

But it did. He could feel the way they fit together so perfectly. He pressed into her again and she mewled into his ear. He did it again and she shuddered. If he kept on, it could get out of hand, fast. "Come on," he said with a squeeze, "let's cook."

He set her to work cutting up a salad while he heated an iron skillet to searing. The planet, it had removed a barrier between them that he hadn't even really known was there. He'd always known and trusted his better judgement, but the lines were starting to blur. She made them blur.

While he waited for the pan he poured them wine. She accepted hers with a murmured thanks that made his belly go warm and hollow with her tone. He dropped a kiss to her shoulder that shot his memory back to the planet and a similar moment and went back to check his pan. Not quite searing heat, but if he stayed on her side of the kitchen, he probably wouldn't have walked away with that one kiss. But when he turned to look at her she was smiling at a tomato and it made him smile, too.

They worked in silence for a while, she finished the salad and he seared the lamb chops to a perfect medium rare. At the table she watched him set the plates down and finally asked him, "Do you wish things had gone further on the planet?"

"Do you?" he asked her when he wasn't sure how to answer.

"No," she said definitively. "When it happens, I want it to be you and me, not...other people."

"It was always you and me," he told her.

"Yeah, but not really. Do you think it's strange that even there we-"

"No. I think it would always be you."

"Like in the alternate realties?"

"Yeah," he said, a gruff edge to his voice with the understanding that no matter what, no matter when or where, when she came into the picture he was always going to be drawn to her. He wanted to hear her say the same, but he saw the uncertainty in her eyes. He wasn't sure if it was not believing the same or not trusting herself, but the uncertainty was there nonetheless. "It's okay to not be sure."

"I'm sure," she said quietly. "I'm sure about you. I'm just not sure about what we're doing here."

He panicked a little. "What do you mean?"

"I mean... we're doing so much wrong."

"It's worth it to me."

"It's worth it to me, too. I just hope you still think it's worth it if things go wrong."

"It'll still be worth it." He knew what he was telling her. And he believed it.

His certainty made her settle back into her chair. "Then okay."

"That's all you needed to hear? That they could throw the reg book at me and I wouldn't regret it?"

"Yeah. Is that bad?"

"No. But I worry about the same thing."

"Me too," she said quietly.

"You've got a lot to lose," he told her.

"So do you."

He shrugged, "Not like you."

"It's just...it's going to be so much harder now."

"How?"

"Out there! Now that we know what it feels like, now that _here_ we can touch," she reached out and threaded her fingers through his," now that we _know. _How do we hide this?"

"The same way we've been hiding it. Just because we know more now doesn't mean we feel differently than we did weeks ago." He had to be honest with himself about how his feelings blindsided him, he felt the same way a lot time ago even if he didn't want to admit it yet.

"Weeks ago our friends hadn't seen the way we can be together."

"I don't know. Do you?"

"No," he said surely, "I don't. They don't know anything, Sam, not anything about the way things are here."

"Do we need to talk about this now?"

He shook his head, "No." And he was a little glad to drop the line of conversation he'd brought up. Part of him was happy that she was unsure. She had a bright and shining career in front of her and he didn't want to take it from her. But he wasn't going to walk away from her either. She'd have to do the walking if it ever came to it. She'd sewn herself up inside him when he wasn't even looking. And he could be the one who loved her more. He knew he could. He already was. She might have fallen first, but he'd always been the one to fall harder. And just because they didn't talk about it didn't make it true.

"How's your lamb?" he asked her.

"It's good," she said with a nod, but she just pushed it around her plate. "I... I don't really like lamb," she confessed then she smiled a little.

It made him laugh. "Well, why the hell'd you bring it, then?"

"Well, we had pork last time and-"

He leaned across the table and kissed her because he had to check the urge to tell her he loved her. She was soft and warm against his mouth. He didn't open her up with his tongue even though she moved like she wanted him to. Even though he could. In only this one place he could, but still, he held back, hoping to save the next taste of what they had on that planet for a night that wasn't tinged with insecurity.

He pulled away from her. "You will always keep me guessing, you know that?" He stood up and took her plate from her. "There's leftover Chinese from last night. You want cashew chicken or beef and broccoli?"

She pretended to think about it but he pulled the cashew chicken out of the fridge and stuck it in the microwave.

"Chicken," she finally decided.

"Chicken it is," he said and pressed the minute button on the microwave. No matter when, or where, or how, he knew her. Would always know her. She made him feel like something greater and he wanted it, wanted her. And she wanted him, too. The microwave dinged and he pulled out her dinner and picked up the bottle of wine off the counter.

Things might be a little uncertain, but they were going to be okay. So he told her that.

"I do worry that the planet changed everything," she told him.

"Maybe it did, but I don't think it necessarily changed things in a bad way."

"You're sure we're not going to have problems? General Hammond must have some idea how things were between us. Everyone turned in a mission report."

"I've seen all the reports, Sam. They didn't mention it and neither did we."

"They didn't?"

"What was there to mention? That they saw us sitting together?"

"You really don't think they knew?"

"I really don't. But I think if they did, they will keep it to themselves. You think Daniel doesn't know the regs? He's read his contract cover to cover and he's a smart guy - he can put two and two together. If Teal'c was going to say something don't you think he would have already? And have you ever known Teal'c to say something that he didn't think was completely necessary?"

"No."

"Then stop worrying. Here is here and out there is... out there," he finished lamely.

"What if I slip?"

"You won't."

"But-"

"Sam, you won't."

He was sure of it. If anyone was going to slip, it would be him. Like next time he had to make a decision to save her or to save them all. He'd have a moment, he knew he would. He liked to think he was a good enough leader to save them all. And he'd die trying.

"Don't do anything stupid," she said as if she could read his mind.

"I'm not making any promises," he said, but he grinned to soften the truth. "Look, it's not going to be easy, but we'll do it because we have to. We can't have this and not be our best out there. We both know we're crossing some lines, and because we know it'll be fine."

"As long as it's hard we're doing okay?" she asked.

"I think that's the way it works."

"We're not the first," she said.

"And we won't be the last."

"I never thought it would be me."

"I never thought it would be you, either. But I'm the lucky sonuvabitch that isn't going looking gift horses in the mouth."

"I'm lucky, too."

"I'm glad you feel that way. Because that's the only thing that's going to make it any easier. I'm happy things didn't go further on the planet, too."

"Yeah?"

"When you make the decision, Sam, I want to know you went into it eyes wide open."

"My eyes are open," she said and he wondered exactly what she was telling him. But, he'd wait to find out. He'd wait until things weren't muddled by what had already happened and until she'd had a chance to fully process what they'd decided. Screwing the regs was no small decision, and despite everything they'd discussed before, the big decisions had just been made.

"Keep 'em open, Sam," he said. "Because things are going to keep changing."

She pushed the cashew chicken around in the carton with the tines of her fork. "For the better, I think."

"Definitely," he said and took another bite of his lamb. He was going to have to buy more wine. A lot more wine. Because things were changing, for the better, for sure.


	10. Beef Stroganoff

By the time he's expecting her for dinner again, he's a little nervous. It's been a while since they had gotten together and that was the last time they'd had a personal conversation. Since that last dinner he and Teal'c had been floating out in space with little hope of being saved - though she's saved him with a little help from her dad - and she'd turned down his invitation to go to the cabin - though in hindsight perhaps he shouldn't have asked her in front of Teal'c, she was already nervous about the guys getting a whiff of what was going on between them. Also, this is only the second time they've made actual plans to get together. The first time seems like so long ago now, when he'd stood in the hallway at the SGC and asked if she was coming to dinner. This time, he'd called her up and asked her to come over. It wasn't that things had gotten to be too much, it's just that he wanted to see her.

Continuing the pretense, she shows up with all the ingredients for Stroganoff. "I checked a cookbook," she tells him when she smiles up at him nervously.

He realizes, suddenly, what it is. For the first time, it's like a date. It isn't her showing up confused, or sad, or angry, it's him inviting her over for dinner so they can spend some time together.

She follows him into the kitchen and deposits her bags of groceries on the kitchen counter. Then they're just staring at one another.

She speaks first. "I can't believe how close we came to losing you guys."

"Thank god for Dad," he agrees.

"He was none too happy to see Daniel and me on that planet. It's been a long time since he's used that tone of voice on me. Then," she pauses, "then I told him it was you and everything changed."

She turns back to her groceries and starts unpacking the bags. He accepts the beef from her and begins slicing it into thin strips.

"He really likes you, you know?"

"I got the impression he tolerated me."

"Dad's a tough nut to crack."

"Tell me about it," he mutters.

She starts slicing an onion. "I think you remind him of himself, when he was younger."

"I doubt your father ever dealt in my brand of irreverence."

"No," she says and he knows she's smiling even though his back is to her. "But you're both good officers."

"How do you get my being a good officer out of needing my second and her dad to come to my rescue?"

"I get it out of a lot of things."

He harrumphs. "Well, thanks."

"Well, you're welcome."

Done slicing the beef he finds himself overcome with the desire to touch her. First he washes his hands, but then, from behind her he slides his wet hands across her shirtfront to rest on her belly. It causes her to shift back into him with a little yelp, "Jack!"

He likes the way she so unselfconsciously says his name in his kitchen. He also likes the way her body presses back against his.

"So what do we do after the onions?"

"Are you telling me you don't know how to make Stroganoff?"

He smiles against her temple. Of course he knows. "Just testing you."

"You can slice the mushrooms."

"Or you can slice the mushrooms," he says and tightens his hold on her.

She acquiesces and grabs the container. "But they need to be washed."

He sighs and releases her, takes the mushrooms and heads back over to the sink.

"I'm sorry I didn't go fishing with you."

"Nah," he says. "I should have asked you privately."

"Yeah," she says, a little forlornly. "Why didn't you?"

"I wasn't thinking. Besides, Teal'c probably would have gone, too. It wouldn't have had to be a thing."

"It would have been very hard to be there and not be alone with you."

"Yeah?"

"More nights like out on the deck," she says simply.

"Yeah." He brings the mushrooms back to her and takes his place behind her. He uses his fingertips to ruffle the short hairs at the nape of her neck and she shivers.

"Not while I have a knife in my hands."

He pouts though she can't see him. So he slides his arms around her again. He fiddles with her buttons but doesn't go so far as to unbutton them despite being able to see, down her front, that she's got a tank top on underneath her blouse. He can also see into her cleavage which means he's not leaving his vantage point anytime soon. She snugs her hips back into his and he pushes back into her. It's not enough to rev him up, not completely, but it feels nice.

When she's done with the mushrooms she turns in his embrace. "Would you kiss me already?"

It's more forward than she's been so far, and he likes it. Still, he teases her with a soft, short kiss.

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Is that all you've got?"

He swoops down and claims her mouth, fists the back of her shirt in his hands, waits until she opens underneath him and uses his tongue to catalogue the ridges of her teeth. She flicks her tongue against his until he winds it up with his own and _that's _enough to rev him up all the way. She makes it so easy to go hard and wanting.

He pulls back from her. "You sure you want dinner? Because we could just go make out for a while."

She laughs. "Yes, I want dinner."

He gives her another quick kiss. "Fine, but I'm going to remember this."

She flicks her eyes down to the front of his pants. "Me too."

He groans. "People don't know this about you, but you're evil." He goes to the stove and pulls out a pan, then grabs butter from the fridge to start the meat. While he works, she puts a pot of water on to boil and, when she passes by him, gives him a sweet caress then a smack on the ass. She's feeling playful. He likes it.

While he cooks, she pours the wine. He sautees the beef in the butter then carefully takes it out of the pan. Then he does the onions and pulls them out, too. Last, he does the mushrooms. All the while she watches him, sips at her wine, and touches him - fingertips along his forearm, knuckles against his hip, a hand between his shoulder blades. When the water boils, she drops in egg noodles and sets the timer for 8 minutes.

"What next?"

"Next, we turn the heat down."

"On the food?" she asks and gives his ass another caress.

"On the food," he confirms and turns the burner down to low.

"Good."

When the pan is sufficiently cool, he dumps in the sour cream. "If the pan is too hot, the sour cream will break and curdle."

"Oh," she says like she cares.

He stirs the sour cream in with the butter and mushrooms and makes the rich sauce.

"It looks good," she says as he dumps the beef and onions back into the mixture.

The timer goes off and she drains the pasta and he dishes them up two plates of the heady food.

In the dining room she makes a happy sound at the first bite that does nothing to deflate the sense of readiness she's instilled in him.

"Is this what it's going to be like now?" he asks her, hoping for the easy togetherness to be the new hallmark of their time together.

"Isn't this better than the other times?"

There were things to be liked about the other times, too, so he winks at her. "More nights like the deck?"

"We can have that without the world falling apart, can't we?"

"I'd like to think so." But he worries that the bulk of their passion is wrapped up in the world ending. That the fire comes from the angst. Then he remembers the kiss in the kitchen and smiles. "I know I said I had no intention of going on any dates, Sam, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy dating you."

"Is that what we're doing?" she asks thoughtfully.

"Feels like a date."

"No it doesn't. Dates are uncomfortable. This is... nice."

"Yeah. It is."

"But if you want the emotionally fraught stuff, I can remind you that you recently scared the crap out of me," she says pointedly.

"You sounded very in control."

"I was terrified. Especially when the weapons burn didn't work."

"And yet you still found a way."

"Of course I did."

"That's the second time you've moved heaven and earth to get me back."

"Well, and Teal'c, too," she says with a grin that belies her pleasure with his acknowledgement.

"You're amazing, you know that?"

She blushes. "I did what I had to do to rescue my team."

"I'm glad you're on my team." But that wasn't all. "And I'm glad you're here."

"Me too. And one day, I'll go fishing with you."

He beams. "I'd love that."

"This is really good," she says, half indicating the food, half everything else.

"Yeah, Sam. It is. Really good."


	11. Eggplant Parmesan

Almost two months go by before they're able to get together again. They'd had a busy month during which he'd tried to invite her over a couple of times but had been gently, sweetly, rebuffed. It had stung a little, thinking he wanted the time more than she did, but she'd smiled softly at him and told him that she wanted to, she just had this or that to do. And he'll give her one thing – she certainly had _looked_ busy. After that it was three weeks in light detox. That was a special kind of hell. Three weeks of sharing dinner with her every night but with Daniel and Loren so close all he could be was her commanding officer rather than her... what? Boyfriend didn't seem right. Lover wasn't true. They hadn't put any labels on what they were doing.

Finally, though, after being home he seeks her out, finds her in her lab and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that they're having dinner together. Tonight. She looks up at him and gives him a confused looking smile like she doesn't know why he's pushing and then agrees, simply. He deflates a little, he'd been geared up to fight for it a little bit. She asks him what she can bring and he tells her not to worry about it, he's got it all under control. That makes her smile widen and her eyes soften further. She thanks him, silently, just her lips moving and then he's backing out of her lab with a distinctive spring in his step.

Later that evening he's slicing eggplant into neat little discs when he hears his front door open. "It's just me," comes her voice and he's inordinately pleased that they've reached the point where she'll just let herself into his house.

She comes straight into the kitchen holding a bottle of wine and he grins because she couldn't just show up she had to contribute and it feels like a metaphor that makes him happy. "I didn't know what we were having," she says, "but I found a bottle of that red we like." It also made him happy to hear he was part of a we again. A we that had a preference for something. It made the whole thing feel so... real.

He takes the proffered bottle from her and sets it down on the counter before snagging her hand and pulling her into his arms. She comes willingly and molds her soft body to his. He can feel her nose against his neck and then her lips. It gives him a jolt to feel her press a kiss against his skin there. He can't go another moment without kissing her. He pulls back from her just enough to bend his head to hers. The kiss starts out light, just a pressing together of their lips, but soon she makes a hungry sound and opens her mouth. He beats her tongue to the punch and is in control of the kiss. He catalogues the ridges of her teeth first and then, when it's becoming clear she's losing patience with his slow, methodical exploration of her mouth, he winds their tongues together in a way that makes her squeak in the back of her throat and press her body even harder against his. It's enough to take his body from content to interested to ready in the span of a handful of heartbeats.

She ends the kiss by tilting her head back and exposing her neck to him. She blows air out through pursed lips and then chuckles. "It's been a long time since we've done that."

"And we're still good at it."

"God, the last three weeks were so hard. With you, but not. And watching you cook dinner every night and just wanting to touch you..."

It makes him feel good to know she had only been holding on by a thread, too. "I think we're creating some kind of fetish between us about cooking," he says lightly even though he's feeling pretty full up on heavy emotions. "Maybe we should be spending a little more time in the living room than in the kitchen."

"I like cooking with you."

"And I like watching you try to cook," he teases.

"Speaking of cooking," she says and steps back out of his arms, "are you going to feed me tonight, or what?"

He wonders seriously for a moment whether _or what _is really an option, because he could think of a lot of things they could be doing outside the kitchen. Hell, if she is so partial to the kitchen, they could do it there. But before he can voice his thoughts she's already moving away to the drawer where he keeps the corkscrew and then is pulling two wine glasses down out of the cupboard. He lets her pour the wine while he goes back to slicing the eggplant.

"What are we having?" she asks as she sets a glass of wine down by his cutting board.

"Eggplant Parmesan."

"Ooh, I like that."

"I know." But mostly he's making it because it's quick and easy and it won't distract him too much from her and the way she just seems to fit into his space, because it is easy to get distracted with her around. Especially when she is feeling flirty and easy, like last time. Hopefully, like she's feeling tonight.

He watches her take a sip of wine and then the way her throat moves as she swallows and boy is he in trouble because even that makes him want her.

"Get the breadcrumbs out of the pantry, would you? And some eggs out of the fridge?"

She doesn't even bother to ask him what he's going to do with them, she just fills his request, wine glass in one hand as she moves around his kitchen. While she watches he makes the egg bath and then seasons the breadcrumbs. She watches him shrewdly as he breads the eggplant discs and teases him about his methodical approach to the task. He kisses her mouth when she gets too impish and tells her to get the pasta and pasta sauce out of the pantry. She can make pasta, they've figured out by now, so he lets her put the water on to boil while he gets a frying pan out of the cabinet.

They've got some time to kill while waiting on the water so he leans back against the counter and pulls her right up into him so her feet are between his and her breasts press into his chest and he can feel every breath she takes. "Wanna make out?" He asks her with a grin and suddenly her arms are around his neck and she's kissing him for everything she's worth.

This part is new. Not the kissing, but the making out like teenagers who are pressed for time and he likes it. She pulls her arms down from around his neck and starts running her hands all over the parts of his body she can reach and he's got to give her an A for effort because damn if she isn't revving him up. Her strong yet incrogurously delicate hands are skimming along his sides when she presses her hips into his and she can feel how ready he is, he knows, because she grins against his mouth.

"Hey," he mutters, "don't make fun of something you're responsible for."

"I wasn't making fun," she presses her hips into him again, "I was just enjoying the scenery."

He threads his fingers into her hair and lightly tugs her head back so he can look into her eyes. "You do too much more enjoying and we're going to have a problem."

She grins. "How long do you think we can keep this up before we end up in bed?"

The question startles him. He knows their relationship was heading there eventually, he just hadn't expected her to so boldly ask when. "I'm not waiting for anything specific, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm not saying I'm ready," she says. "I think it'll change everything and I'm still getting used to being out there while we're like this in here."

He thinks he followed that, but there's not a lot of blood left in his brain. "Then I guess we'll keep this up until you're ready."

"It's not going to make you... angry... to wait."

"Why would it make me angry?"

She presses her hips back into his and then raises an eyebrow Teal'c would be proud of.

"Sam, I'm a grown man. If I can't deal with a hard-on now and again then I'm not much of a man now, am I?"

She blushes prettily at his blunt statement and he finds it rather incongruous with the woman who can flirt with him so easily, who takes pleasure in turning him on. Who will look directly at what she does to him with a glint in her eye that makes it very hard not to take her straight to bed. But to talk about it, to say it out loud, apparently, makes her cheeks stain that pretty pink and he finds that he really loves that about her.

"How's your water doing?"

She peeks over into the pot. "Just tiny bubbles. We've got some more time."

Using the hand that's still buried in her hair he directs her mouth back to his and kisses her slowly, deeply, and tries to make love to her mouth in a way that will make her just as ready and willing as he is. Not because he wants to push her, but because he likes the way her eyes go dark when she's as ramped up as he is. When he pulls back from her, her eyes open slowly and he can see it, the small ring of blue around pupils blown wide with desire. He licks his lips and her eyes drop to watch the movement and she copies it.

He reaches around her with his free hand and grasps her behind, pulling her tightly into him. He rotates his hips and lets the pressure back him down a little. He must look just this side of wild because she says, "I didn't come here tonight to make things hard on you." His eyes fly open wide and she starts to laugh. "Oh, I didn't mean that the way it sounded, but it's true nonetheless. Difficult, I meant."

"You don't make things difficult," he tells her. "You make them seem damn easy."

"Not so easy," she says with a sad little smile. "Because what we have here still has to stay here."

"We knew that going in."

"Yeah."

"Tell me something," he says and stands up straight, putting a little space between them. "Are you not ready because you're worried about how we'll function," he flicks his hand out toward the sky, "out there?"

"Maybe, a little."

"If you think sex is going to change the way I feel about you, you're wrong."

"Sex changes things."

"Not that much. Sam, if I was gonna make a bad decision out there about you, whether we're sleeping together or not, it would have happened already. It would have happened on that planet while we were detoxing. Out there, you're under my command along with Daniel and Teal'c and I take that responsibility very seriously."

"I know you do."

"I'm just saying, don't not be ready because you're afraid it's going to put me – us – in a bad position out there."

"I'm still trying to assimilate my feelings," she says slowly. "It's not only about you."

"Okay. It's okay if you're not ready."

She steps back into him and hugs him tightly. "Thank you."

She steps away from him then to check on her water and then starts fussing with the package of noodles so he gives her some space to think, lets her enormous brain process the things they've said to one another. He really doesn't fault her for not being ready to go to bed, though he'd take her there right now if she gave him the go ahead. And he can even understand _why_ she's holding back. He just wanted to make sure it wasn't because she didn't trust him to do the right thing if something happened out there.

"The water's boiling," she says and pulls him out of his thoughts and back to her.

"Okay, time to get the eggplant on." While she dumps the pasta into the water, he heats olive oil in this frying pan. They spend the next ten minutes frying up the eggplant to a beautiful golden brown and heating the pasta sauce in a saucepan.

When all the food is done, he makes them beautiful looking plates that she even comments on. "It looks like a restaurant," she remarks as he sets the plate down in front of her at the table. He notices she's topped up their wine glasses and brought them to the table.

She takes a bite of the eggplant and her face goes blissful. "Let's not wait two months again."

"You really just come for the food, don't you?" he teases.

Her eyes open and her face turns serious. "No. The food was... an excuse... at first. I wanted to be with you and I didn't know how to do that."

"At the beginning?"

She nods, "It was about you. I needed _you_. I just didn't know how to deal with that. I didn't want to admit it."

"It's okay to need people."

"I didn't need _people_, Jack."

"It's okay to need me," he revises.

"Not really, it isn't," she says, referencing the UCMJ, he's sure.

"Well, you can't help who you fall in.." he trails off uneasily.

She locks her eyes with his. "Who you fall in love with?" she finishes quietly.

He swallows heavily. He hadn't really meant to say it. Feeling it was one thing, but he also feels like it's too soon. He shrugs one shoulder and knows he has a sheepish look on his face.

"No," she says slowly, "I guess you can't."

He knows then that they're not going to acknowledge the revelation, not right now, anyway. But that's okay, because she's got a content sort of look on her face that he didn't realize had been missing. There had been a slight line of worry by her eyes he hadn't placed until it was gone.

He knows she now knows that he was serious when he said sex wouldn't change how he felt about her and he wonders, if knowing he loves her, would make it easier for her to take the next step. He didn't know, but he hoped.

She picks up her glass and took a long sip of wine. "I'm glad we did this tonight."

He's not sure if she means the getting together for dinner or the talking things through without meaning to, but he guesses it doesn't really matter. "Me too."

He watches as she tucks back into her Eggplant Parmesan, her shoulders relaxed, her body loose, and realizes that it might have been too soon, but it's something she'd needed to hear and so he is glad he almost said it. He doesn't know what the next date between them will bring but he takes comfort in knowing that there is an easy peace growing between them. He just hopes nothing is coming their way that is going to challenge it.


End file.
